Forty two-week-old meat chickens arrive in two days: now sounds like a great time to begin building a new chickenhouse. It’s not like we’re starting from scratch. The plan is to reassemble and repurpose the once-and-formerly-future farm stand. With its fairly massive floor, 6×6 rough cut cedar posts, and galvanized roof, it should be a fairly solid and complete framework, just add some studs and plywood. Except, the stand was completely taken apart for the old-farm-new-farm move, with the exception of the base, which was only cut in two. So it’s kind of a puzzle. Michael gets to work! (Elsewhere today, another shopping trip to our farmers’ market…our attendance record is so far perfect…)
Animals
Abandoned bee village
There’s an apparently abandoned bee village on the edge of the tree-enclosed clearing just beyond the main field (the clearing is past the fence, covered in snow, in this pic). There is a backstory here, still to be fully figured out, but the basic fact of the moment is a forlorn, ghost town-looking double row of hives, maybe 15 in all. I don’t know anything about beekeeping, so I did a little research. These seem to be the standard Langstroth hive design, used all over the world. From the photos I saw, the set-up here looks pretty normal, except for the tilting, the worn out paint, and the solidly rusted electric fence that surrounds them. Sorting this out is something new to do this spring. Our future in bees…
One-horse farming
Conall‘s winter job this year is cutting firewood on Canada’s east coast (Nova Scotia), in partnership with his trusty workhorse, Dixie. It sounds pretty intense. He started tiny farming from scratch two seasons ago, our first full-season full-timer, way back in ’07. Last year, he was out in NS, on a tiny, one-horse farm, learning to plow and cultivate veggies, and bring in the hay, with Dixie. This winter’s job involves heading into the woods with Dixie, where he fells small trees with a chainsaw, guides Dixie to drag the logs, at times through waist-deep snow, to a clearing, cuts down the logs to firewood, loads it onto the sled, and hauls it out for delivery. Conall’s plan for this summer: a Dixie-powered market garden… What I wonder is, the Kubota compact tractor vs Dixie?
See ya, goats and chickens…
Doing the last rounds on the old farm, saying farewell to chickens and goats. Here, a bunch of the girls (goats) are chomping away on hay, and the eight cockerels are enjoying a day in the cold sun. They seem to be getting on well, there used to be usually one low guy running a little scared, but since they’ve been kept in for a bunch of supercold days, all has apparently been worked out and they stick togther now. Of course, who knows what’s going on in the chicken mind?! The goodbye is not any formal thing—a little ceremony, perhaps?!—just something in my head. Ends and beginnings are weird, before and after we can make as much or as little of ’em as we like, but the actual fact happens in a blink. It looks like I’ll do the big main farming move on Sunday. The farm sale doesn’t close for a couple of months, so I’ll be back here in March (hey, that’s only next month already!) for the greenhouse and to dig up some herb transplants. Meanwhile, I’ve given Bob the chickens (the girls are laying away, the guys, well, they’re past their tender meat-bird prime…and looking good), so they’re be well taken care of. And I’m looking around these last days with slightly new eyes at the familiar stuff I’ll be leaving… :)
Chickens on egg
Another (quiet) farm day, another fine distraction from the chickens’ bag of entertaining tricks: swarming on stuff! This happened to be a piece of a semi-frozen egg that I found in the deep litter. The egg had probably been buried since yesterday, insulated, frozen to the point of cracking, but not yet hard as rock. I broke it open to take a look, and accidentally dropped a big chunk. BAM, the girls were on it in a mad rush, a totally focussed frenzy, like nothing else in the world even existed. If it was anything but the wee friendly girls, that sort of swarming would be kinda scary. As it is, it was fun to watch. Crazy chickens.
Checking on the beef
Sammy the Steer, born at 4am in the freezing cold barn last January, is healthy and hefty at around 800lbs (360kg), and approaching the end of his arc as a provider of tasty, mainly grass-fed beef. He and his three pals will likely go off to auction in March. They’re heavier than they’d normally be on a mostly grass diet (supplemented with some grain), because Bob didn’t wean them from their mothers for an extra couple of months. Mother’s milk is good. I’ll miss cows on the new farm. Although I’ve never been involved in their day-to-day, they’ve been close neighbors. My real connection with them is through MANURE, tons and tons of 6- to 12-month-old, air-dried, partially-composted, nutrient-rich goodness in a constant, convenient heap, there for the taking. I don’t see cattle in my near farming future. I hope to get to them eventually, meanwhile, putting some animals in the new tiny farm food chain sooner than later is on my mind. Perhaps goats?
Chickens standing around
I’ve been keeping the eight guys indoors most days lately, opening up their door only when the sun is out. They still seem little worse for the wear after weeks of roaming around in the sub-zero cold. They’ve suffered a little frostbite to the tips of their combs, likely from the severest cold nights in the coop, and there’s no sure way around that short of insulating and heating the chickenhouse (Bob said that happened even with 300 layers sharing body heat). Some days, they seem to like just standing around in the snow, even when there’s feed, warm water once or twice a day, and comfy dry litter at home. They often stand on one leg at a time, keeping the other one warm…